Research on Intelligent Control System for Robots Assisting Humans

我们的社会正在迅速老龄化。预计超过25%的日本人口将由65岁以上的老年人组成。其他国家，如德国和法国，如果这些国家的情况不改变，最终也会遇到类似的情况。在老龄化社会，越来越多的老年人将需要继续工作来养活自己。为了应对即将到来的老龄化社会，必须开发机器人或先进的机械系统，以帮助老年人完成工作或日常生活。该项目是从1996年4月至1999年3月进行的，旨在研究一种智能控制系统，用于帮助人类的机器人。特别是，我们考虑了一个基本问题的控制器设计的机器人处理一个单一的对象与人类协调。在项目的第一年，我们讨论了机器人处理物体的基本控制器设计问题， ...更多信息 与人类合作。也就是说，如何产生或启动机器人运动与人类的合作处理的对象，而不会造成不稳定的问题已经被认为是这个问题的几个控制方案已被提出作为候选的控制策略。我们已经做了比较研究，其中有前途的控制方案，使用六个自由度的工业机器人。主要成果载于本报告第一部分。在项目的第二年，我们讨论了机器人和人类之间除了搬运重物之外还可能进行何种合作。通过利用多个机器人的冗余协调，其他类型的合作也是可能的。作为一个例子，实现了两个机器人与一个人合作处理柔性物体的概念。一个是来自每个机械手手腕上的力传感器的噪声问题。另一个是与每个机器人的坐标系的不对准有关的问题。研究的主要结果载于本报告第二部分。本报告省略了坐标系的失准问题。在第三年的研究中，我们开发了一个用于人机协作的移动的双机械手系统，该移动的双机械手系统的开发得到了OMRON公司的部分支持。该系统由一个全方位移动的基座、一个附着在移动的基座上的本体和两个附着在本体上的七自由度机械手组成。少

Our society is rapidly aging. More than 25% of Japanese population is expected to be composed of people older than 65 years old. Other countries such as German and France will eventually encounter similar, if the situations of the countries do not change. In the aging society, more and more elder people will be required to continue to work to support themselves. Robots or advanced mechanical systems, which support elder people to do their tasks or their daily life, have to be developed for the coming aging society.The project was a three years' project carried out from April 1996 through March 1999 and aimed to study an intelligent control system for robots assisting humans. Especially, we considered a fundamental problem of the controller design of robots handling a single object in coordination with humans.The research results are classified into three parts. During the first year of the project, we had discussed a fundamental controller design problem for robots handling an object i … More n cooperation with a human. That is, how to generate or initiate robot motion for cooperative handling of an object with a human without causing instability problem had been considered.Several control schemes for this problem had been proposed as candidates of the control strategies. We had done a comparative study of promising control schemes among them using an industrial robot with six degrees of freedom. Main result is included in Part I of this report.What kind of cooperation is possible between robots and humans other than handling of a heavy object had been discussed during the second year of the project. Other types of cooperation had been shown possible by utilizing the redundancy of multiple robots in coordination. As an example, handling of a flexible object by two robots in cooperation with a human was realized to show the concept.In this system, we encounter two problems. One is a problem of noises from force sensors attached to the wrist of each manipulator. The other is a problem relating to the misalignment of the coordinate system of each robot. The main results of the research is included in Part II of this report. The misalignment problem of coordinate systems are omitted in this report. Refer to the reference [1] in Part IV for this problem.During the third year of the project, we developed a mobile dual-manipulator system for human-robot collaboration, The development of the mobile dual- manipulator system had been partially supported by OMRON Corporation. The system consists of a omni-directional mobile base, a body attached to the mobile base, and two seven-degrees-of-freedom manipulators attached to the body. Less